Ag Reserve To Get Contingency Plan

County commissioners decided on Tuesday they will go ahead with a contingency plan for development of the Agricultural Reserve, despite the disapproval of state planners who must approve the idea.

Six of seven commissioners - all but Karen Marcus - supported letting the area develop into a community with three Wellington-like "town centers," each built around a Motorola-style industrial complex.

The Ag Reserve comprises about 20,500 acres west of Boynton Beach and Delray Beach between Florida's Turnpike and the Everglades. The plan would take effect Jan. 1, 2000, only if voters do not approve a $140 million farmland-preservation referendum next November.

Under the plan, the Ag Reserve would eventually have about 55,000 residents, about twice as many as it could have with its current zoning. But it also would have lots of open space, including most of the existing horse farms and all the currently undeveloped land west of U.S. 441.

Planners in the state's growth-management bureaucracy, the Department of Community Affairs, already have criticized alternative-development concept. They say it promotes urban sprawl, and the county has not justified the construction of so many new homes.

But several commmissioners praised the plan as a vast improvement over the urban sprawl that has take over much of the area to the south and east of the reserve area.

"Whether [the Ag Reserve) continues to farm or not, we should have this type of plan on the books," Commission Chairman Ken Foster said.

Still, the commissioners reaffirmed their support for preserving farmland.

"I'm looking to have no homes out there," Commissioner Burt Aaronson said. "We've got to preserve the land, and we've got to preserve the water."

But he and the other commissioners supported the alternative-development plan, anyway, as part of a pledge to the Rangeline Coalition, a group of the largest Ag Reserve landowners.

Some coalition members would prefer the commission simply give them the option of selling their land to developers. But they agreed to support the preservation program in return for the alternative-development plan.

"It gives the county more opportunity to sell the [preservation) program, because now people know what will happen if they don't approve it," said Hugo Unruh, the coalition's lobbyist.

Supporters of the preservation program, though, urged the commissioners to wait until after the referendum to set up a development plan. They say it will confuse voters to hear the county discussing two separate futures for the Ag Reserve at the same time.

Some local preservationists had privately lobbied Linda Loomis Shelley, secretary of the Department of Community Affairs, to oppose the plan. Shelley did write the commissioners a letter urging them to wait. She hinted that her department might make an unspecified amount of money available to help the county pay for farmland preservation. Supporters think it might be as much as $9 million.

Tuesday's decision was not final because it came during a County Commission workshop, but the commissioners are expected to ratify it at a regular meeting next Tuesday.

If they do, it means they will have to negotiate with Community Affairs planners, because all amendments to the county's growth plan must meet with state approval.